Olympic Affair
Page 39
I put aside the young-adult novel. I dived into this, knowing from the start that I wouldn’t have or find all those “answers.” I approached the research hungrily, in much the same fashion as I did my nonfiction books, which I am proud to say have drawn praise for their thoroughness and in at least two instances—Third Down and a War to Go and Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming—involved the unearthing of much revelatory material. Once I started writing, documented fact was my outline. Of course, I used dramatic license, primarily in unleashing my imagination. I let it play out in my head, seeing and hearing it as I consulted my gathered material, and typed. Much of the dialogue comes from or is at least suggested by what was said in newspaper stories of the time. The outline of Glenn Morris’s life—pre-Olympics, post-Olympics, post-marriage—is as it happened. That includes his one-season NFL stint with the Detroit Lions. The oft-repeated lore was that the hard-luck Morris suffered a broken leg in the first game of the 1940 season. Some online databases have him down for playing four games, but a game-by-game perusal of the Lions’ season and additional checking of microfilm showed that Morris in fact played in six games—and then was unceremoniously released with three games remaining before he joined the Columbus Bullies. The more I learned of his stunning “fall,” the more I was saddened. Yet this was a story, essentially with a life of its own, taking me where it wanted to go.
I wrote quickly for two reasons. One, I had a deadline. But, more important, I wanted to see how this story would turn out.
I have changed a few names, including that of Glenn Morris’s wife.
Leni Riefenstahl did appear at the Telluride Film Festival in 1974 and faced a reception that matches what I have here. Her quotes come from a story by Post film critic Rena Andrews. I rewrote the information about Leni’s appearance from Rena’s story and elsewhere into my own piece, by a fictitious bureau reporter.
Riefenstahl did go to Los Angeles in November 1938, seeking to rally support for Olympia, when Glenn Morris—who had been in the headlines for his marital problems and abuse allegations—still was living there and attempting to make it as an actor. Hubert Stowitts indeed showed a copy of Olympia to Los Angeles–based Olympic athletes earlier, in March.
I have the Glenn Morris artifacts on display at the Simla school several years before Ververs oversaw the installation of a first case in a different part of the building, before a new gym was built and the display was moved to the gym lobby. For a few days, I felt guilty when I nudged Thomas Wolfe’s arrival in Berlin up a few days. But his interview for the Berliner Tageblatt, his relationship with caricaturist Thea Voelcker, and his attendance and actions at the Games’ track and field events, mostly were real. (They later were fictionalized in Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again.) Also very real was Glenn and Walter Wood’s jog for photographers with Max Schmeling. The Associated Press picture of the encounter appeared in publications around the world, and that photo is one of many that served to suggest incidents in this narrative. In many cases, I was writing “around” actual pictures. Another example was a famous picture of Helen Stephens’s post-race visit with Hitler. Glenn’s interview with noted sportswriter Joe Williams actually happened and the Rocky Mountain News story here is genuine, although slightly cleaned up. Other journalists—including Alan Gould, and then others in Denver—wrote what I have them writing.
Yes, I have drawn other historical figures, such as Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon, Paul Gallico, and William Shirer, into this, but in credible situations. In Shirer’s case, I used his books Berlin Diary and Nightmare Years for background.
The track and field competition, whether in Berlin or on the various post-Olympic tours, is reality based, as is Glenn’s itinerary after the Games, including his “injury” in Stockholm and disappearance from the Scandinavian tour at that point. No, I’m not convinced the “injury,” cited in the wire-service reports of the Stockholm meet, was genuine, but I went along with that here. That timetable at least gibes with Leni saying in her memoirs that he returned to Berlin from Sweden.
Those post-Olympic tours indeed were chaotic, and the 1936 newspaper stories—disclosing dates, locations, participants and results—don’t always match up with the “official,” but sometimes erroneous American Olympic Committee Report, a very self-serving, historical record published in hardback form and sold to the public. I’ve used discretion and common sense in piecing this together. For example, Jesse Owens’s coach, Larry Snyder, said before leaving for the United States that some athletes were scheduled to go to Czechoslovakia and Austria, but had that trip pulled out from under them. I’ve let the problems with that part of the schedule help explain why only Glenn Morris, discus gold medalist Ken Carpenter and two others (Walter Wood and runner Dale Schofield) made a scaled-down swing through Czechoslovakia. Also, Brigham Young University’s Sports Hall of Fame biography reports that Schofield not only won the 100 meters in the August 17 meet at Prague, as documented in an AP story also noting the performances of Glenn, Carpenter, and Wood, but also says that Schofield won the 100 and 200 in another meet in the same country. Some of the secondary meets apparently didn’t make the wire services. The AOC required athletes to sign forms by July 20—when most of them were on the SS Manhattan—requesting “leaves of absence” to compete in the exhibitions, and the tours in theory were voluntary, but that seems to have been a formality designed to obligate them. I was amused to note that Daniel Farris, the AAU official, wrote in the AOC Report that he would recommend skipping such future tours after future Olympics, because he had found that the athletes had been enthusiastic in advance of the Games about participating in post-Olympic tours but that enthusiasm dwindled by the time the tours actually took place. I assumed that meant the AAU and AOC didn’t make enough money. Regardless, I read plenty of references that made it clear that the athletes who signed the forms felt as if they were being ordered around and had little choice in the matter.
As I continued my research about Riefenstahl, reading of her in the wide selection of books available and also in her own memoirs, I gradually understood why it was unwise to assume she told the truth about anything. That’s not a newsflash. Her many biographers made that disingenuousness a cornerstone of their works. Yet there almost always is some truth in what she said, amid the rationalizing, twisting, dissembling . . . and lying. I came to think of it as Leni’s Truth. I did note and use what she said in her memoirs in forming the outline for this story, but I was judicious, selective, skeptical, and open eyed.
I believe there was some basis to her “lunatic” story at the stadium tied to Glenn’s victory, especially when considered in the context of their physical attraction and relationship. In her memoirs, Leni also told the story about a “graphologist” analyzing Glenn’s handwriting. Again, I don’t believe she told the whole truth, and I’ve speculated what that whole truth was. Her memoirs repeatedly and so brazenly massaged the facts, it became laughable. But the massaging almost always was done to make her look better, which is why her “confession” about being enamored of Glenn and even dreaming of marrying him before he returned to the United States and to his “fiancée” was unusual. At that point, she was the one “rejected.” Given her track record, that was at least surprising—or a surprising admission. Glenn Morris broke Leni Riefenstahl’s heart. She got over it and, in my mind, even got revenge later, but the American athlete managed to break the heart of a shameless opportunist who often seemed to be heartless. Although I don’t buy all of her story, and don’t believe she told it all, I find it enlightening and credible enough to be additional confirmation that an affair took place.
I watched her as an actress in The Holy Mountain, The Blue Light, and S.O.S. Iceberg. This is grudging, but especially in the context of how women were treated professionally at the time, her work in getting The Blue Light made on a relative shoestring budget and doing a lot of the directing on location is especially remarkable, and it truly is a fascinating film—and now easier to judge because of English subtitles o
n the DVD. That she later betrayed her collaborators and hogged more credit than she deserved for the film doesn’t change the facts that her contributions were trailblazing and the film was well done for its time.
Of course, I watched her documentaries—the rediscovered Victory of Faith, plus Triumph of the Will and Olympia. And I came to regard a stunning 1993 German television documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, as both illuminating and invaluable. She “cooperated,” but she all but convicted herself. Watching her react, squirm, complain, rant, and tell what obviously are lies or half-truths—while probably believing it all—for the first time had me thinking I was beginning to know her. She was in her early nineties when the documentary was filmed.
She was not a “sympathetic” character, and I didn’t want to make her one. But she also was complicated, with multiple dimensions. That ability to rationalize and adapt for her own advantage meant she could be many different things, while convincing herself she was genuine, regardless of the swings. I wasn’t going to portray her as devoid of feeling and affection. She wasn’t. She wasn’t absent of charm, either, which helped her somewhat “rehabilitate” her reputation in later years. But in following her selfish agenda, she was both capable of evil and, even more, of embracing and tolerating evil, if that’s what served her at any given moment.
To bring this full-circle: The oak tree mystery brought me into this, and that remains unsolved. Had I continued the novel’s narrative beyond 1938, this is what I would have said: After Glenn Morris moved to Denver in 1940, with his marriage failed, with his movie and football careers over, with his life disintegrating only four years after his victory in Berlin, he went to Fort Collins and cut down that damn tree.
—Terry Frei
Denver, Colorado
Appendix
1936 United States Track and Field Roster
Men
Albritton, Dave (High Jump-Silver)
Bartlett, Lee (Javelin)
Brooks, John (Broad Jump)
Brown, Billy (Hop, Step, Jump)
Brown, Tarzan (Marathon)
Cagle, Harold (1,600 Relay-Silver)
Carpenter, Ken (Discus-Gold)
Clark, Bob (Broad Jump, Decathlon-Silver)
Crosbie, Ernie (50K Walk)
Cunningham, Glenn (1,500-Silver)
Dawson, Glen (Steeplechase)
Deckard, Tom (5,000)
Draper, Foy (400 Relay-Gold)
Dreyer, Henry (Hammer)
Dunn, Gordon (Discus-Silver)
Favor, Donald (Hammer)
Fitch, Alfred (1,600 Relay-Silver)
Francis, Sam (Shot Put)
*Glickman, Marty (400 Relay)
Graber, Bill (Pole Vault)
Hardin, Glenn (400 Hurdles-Gold)
Hornboster, Chuck (800)
Johnson, Cornelius (High Jump-Gold)
Kelly, Johnny (Marathon)
Koegler, Ernest (50K Walk)
Lash, Don (5,000; 10,000)
LuValle, Jimmy (400-Bronze)
Mangan, Albert (50K Walk)
Manning, Harold (Steeplechase)
McCluskey, Joe (Steeplechase)
McMahon, Billy (Marathon)
Meadows, Earle (Pole Vault-Gold)
Metcalf, Malcom (Javelin)
Metcalfe, Ralph (100-Silver, 400 Relay-Gold)
Morris, Glenn (Decathlon-Gold)
O’Brien, Edward (1,600 Relay-Silver)
Owens, Jesse (100-Gold, 200-Gold, Broad Jump-Gold, 400 Relay-Gold)
Packard, Bob (200)
Parker, Jack (Decathlon-Bronze)
Patterson, Joe (400 Hurdles)
Pentti, Eino (10,000)
Pollard, Fritz (110 Hurdles-Bronze)
Robinson, Mack (200-Silver)
Romero, Rolland (Hop, Step, Jump)
Rowe, William (Hammer)
San Romani, Archie (1,500)
Schofield, Dale (400 Hurdles)
Sefton, Bill (Pole Vault)
Smallwood, Harold (400)
Staley, Roy (110 Hurdles)
*Stoller, Sam (400 Relay)
Terry, Alton (Javelin)
Thurber, Delos (High Jump-Bronze)
Torrance, Jack (Shot Put)
Towns, Forrest (110 Hurdles-Gold)
Wood, Walter (Discus)
Venzke, Gene (1,500)
Wilkins, Dudley (Hop, Step, Jump)
Williams, Archie (400-Gold)
Williamson, Harry (800)
Woodruff, John (800-Gold)
Wudyka, Stanley (10,000)
Wykoff, Frank (100, 400 Relay-Gold)
Young, Bob (1,600 Relay-Silver)
Zaitz, Dmitri (Shot Put)
Zamperini, Lou (5,000)
Women
Arden, Alice (High Jump)
Bland, Harriett (100, 400 Relay-Gold)
Burch, Betty (Javelin)
Ferrara, Evelyn (Discus)
*Hasenfus, Olive (400 Relay)
Kelly, Kathlyn (High Jump)
O’Brien, Anne (80 Hurdles)
Pickett, Tidye (80 Hurdles)
Robinson, Betty (400 Relay-Gold)
Rogers, Annette (100, High Jump, 400 Relay-Gold)
Schaller, Simone (80 Hurdles)
Stephens, Helen (100-Gold, Discus, 400 Relay-Gold)
*Stokes, Louise (400 relay)
*Warren, Josephine (400 Relay)
Wilhelmsen, Gertrude (Discus, Javelin)
Worst, Martha (Javelin)
*Listed on roster, but did not compete.
Resources
Books
Bach, Steven. Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. New York: A. Knopf, 2007.
Bachrach, Susan D. The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.
Baker, William J. Jesse Owens: An American Life. New York: The Free Press, 1986.
Chapman, Mike. The Gold and the Glory: The Amazing True Story of Glenn Morris, Olympic Champion and Movie Tarzan. Newton, IA: Culture House, Books, 2003.
Cigaretten-Bilderdienst. Olympia 1936. Hamburg, Germany: Cigaretten-Bilderdienst, 1936.
Cunningham, Glenn. Never Quit. Lincoln, VA: Chosen Books, 1981.
Dempsey, Jack. Dempsey. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Donald, David Herbert. Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987.
Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.
Glickman, Marty. The Fastest Kid on the Block: The Marty Glickman Story. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Hart-Davis, Duff. Hitler’s Games: The 1936 Olympics. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1986.
Hilton, Christopher. Hitler’s Olympics: The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2006.
Hirn, John. Aggies to Rams: The History of Football at Colorado State University. Loveland, CO: Vision Graphics, 2009.
Infield, Glenn B. Leni Riefenstahl: The Fallen Film Goddess. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: 1936–45 Nemesis. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
Large, David Clay. Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
Magi, Aldo P., and Walser, Richard, editors. Thomas Wolfe Interviewed: 1929–1938. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Owens, Jesse. Jesse: The Man Who Outran Hitler. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1978.
Riefenstahl, Leni. Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
Riefenstahl, Leni. Olympia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Rother, Rainer. Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius. New York: Continuum, 2002.
Rubien, Frederick W. Report of the American Olympic Committee: Games of the XIth Olympiad, Berlin, Germany, August 1 to 16, 1936. New York: American Olympic Committee, 1936.
Salkeld, Audrey. A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl. London: Pimlico, 1997.
Schaap, Jeremy. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. N
ew York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. New York: Knopf, 1941.
Shirer, William L. The Nightmare Years: 1930–40. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1984.
Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: MacMillan, 1970.
Trimborn, Jurgen. Leni Riefenstahl: A Life. New York: Faber and Faber, 2007.
Tunis, John R. The Duke Decides. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1939.
Walters, Guy. Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Dream. New York: William Morrow, 2006.
Other Publications
Film Culture, Spring 1973. Many articles in a section labeled “A Tribute to Leni Riefenstahl,” pp. 90-226.
Time magazine, uncredited story, “Games at Garmisch,” February 17, 1936.
Many newspapers, including Denver Post; Rocky Mountain News; Simla Sun; New York Times
Films (All Available on DVD)
Riefenstahl as Actress:
The Holy Mountain
The Blue Light
S.O.S. Iceberg
Riefenstahl’s Documentaries:
Victory of Faith
Triumph of the Will
Olympia
On Riefenstahl:
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl: A two-part documentary, originally made for European television. Directed by Ray Muller. 1993.
Morris as Actor:
Tarzan’s Revenge